A satisfying close to the trilogy, pacy and kinetic but at the same time gritty and shadowy, and every bit a Christopher Nolan film. His signature themes of the ways that identities and lives are constructed, and the choices - often distinctively moral choices - that structure those identities and lives, are at the fore, along with plenty of convincing action and entries to the franchise by Inception alumni Joseph Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard and an unrecognisable Tom Hardy as Bane, plus Anne Hathaway more than holding her own.
One of the most impressive things about The Dark Knight was the way that it and Batman Begins felt like two parts of a single film; The Dark Knight Rises, however, feels like a second and final instalment, with events coming to a culmination and, at film's start, middle and end, Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon coming to form something like a moral centre to the whole thing, and the character who (contra Harvey Dent and the Joker) is perhaps the true contrast and balance to Batman, as well as the one who enables him in the first place.
One of the most impressive things about The Dark Knight was the way that it and Batman Begins felt like two parts of a single film; The Dark Knight Rises, however, feels like a second and final instalment, with events coming to a culmination and, at film's start, middle and end, Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon coming to form something like a moral centre to the whole thing, and the character who (contra Harvey Dent and the Joker) is perhaps the true contrast and balance to Batman, as well as the one who enables him in the first place.
